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-The number of people we have to play will normally be 4 -- preferably no game that goes above that in terms of recommended players.
-My family is nerdy (my mom plays baldurs gate and stuff, lol) so genre doesn't matter but we do prefer a game with some sort of fantasy/sci-fi/adventure theme rather than no real theme at all.
-I'm looking to spend around ~25 or under if possible but I could go up. (I already got everyone enough presents besides this, and I'm not rich! :) )
-Ideal game time would be either short, or a max of an hour. No more than an hour.
-Easy to moderate for rules and difficulty please. We are all intelligent and could get it sorted out, but prefer not to be bothered :-D

Thanks!

Hmmmm if it wasn't for the fact it's over your ideal price (usually retail for about 40.00 quid I believe) I would literally spam this thread while screaming COSMIC ENCOUNTER at you repeatedly.

Sci-fi themed, huge replayability (Each player is given a random race out of a pool of 50 in the base set alone) and 100% player interaction/negiotiation. All of our games have run to about a hour each and the basic of the rules are dead simple.

Basics are each players turn then draw a card which indicates which player they attack. If they win the battle they get a colony on the other players world. First player to get 4 colonies on a any 4 alien worlds wins the game. Complications come from each race having horrifically broken abilities, being able to call in allies for the either the invasion or the defence and a card based combat system (SO An Attack with 4 ships in addition to a +12 card is beaten by a defence of 2 defender ships, 2 allied ships and a +15 card for example.

It can play between 3-5 out of the box so it pretty much ticks all of your boxes other then price :-/

I want to get COSMIC ENCOUNTER someday, too!
(I didn't realize it was such a quick game to play! The reason I left it off my list this year is because I got Middle Earth Quest for my birthday recently and thought it filled the Giant Board Full Of Stuff category nicely for now =P)

Support for my all-pepperjack-cheese food bank charity drive has been lukewarm at best.

If you ever played Heroquest (or Advanced Heroquest) you'll be right at home. Basically, one player takes on the role of the dungeon overlord while the other players pick a hero. You pick one of the scenarios from the book, lay out the tiles specified for the board in the scenario and then play through it.
It's probably as close as you can get to an RPG without the number crunching or multiple rulebooks. Each hero (and the overlord for that matter) has a choice of classes which are dealt with via the simple expedient of picking a card deck representing that class (warriors for example have the choice of a beserker or a sword and board type). They'll get a number of cards detailing either a piece of equipment or a skill, with any rules applicable wrote on it. Similarly the overlord has monster cards which detail how many monsters are in a group and their stats, and a deck of cards he can play during the encounter representing traps, monster abilities and the like.
The rules are fairly straightforward. Each scenario will give you the victory conditions for both sides, every turn each player gets two actions, which can be moving, searching or using a skill or ability via their cards. Combat is pretty simple too - you have a pool of coloured die, and each monster or weapon will tell you which colour die it rolls to attack, and which colour it rolls to defend, you simply subtract one from the other to work out the damage.
Each scenario takes around an hour or so to play through, there's also rules for stringing the encounters into a campaign (with a decidedly tongue in cheek take on the traditional fantasy plot) complete with levelling up for the heroes and overlord (which is literally a matter of adding one or more cards to your hand). The game even comes with a pad of campaign sheets letting you record the progress of the players (which is incredibly easy thanks to it being card based; 'remembering' your level four halfling is as simple as separating out whatever skill and item cards he has when you pack up, so it's mainly just a case of ticking the box for who won which scenario and writing down how much gold the heroes have accrued so far).
Generally speaking you can explain the rules in about ten minutes, half that if the people you're playing with have seen Lord of the Rings or have any experience with fantasy. There's a whole bunch of miniatures in the box (39 to be precise) which look pretty cool (they're fairly robust plastic too, so unlikely to be damaged by clumsy players), and of course since the board consists of modular tiles and the monster groups balance on the number of players it's a breeze to design your own encounters should you get tired of the ones it ships with (and no doubt a raft of expansions inbound featuring more models, cards and board tiles should you like it enough to spend more money on it).

One I got introduced to recently was bananagrams. Had it first explained to me as competitive multiplayer single player speed scrabble - and that sums it up very well. You get a bag of scrabble tiles (minus the points and a different letter distribution) and the aim of the game is to make a scrabble style grid of words using all your letters first. Everyone begins with a number of tiles depending on the number of players, with the rest face down in a central pool, and as soon as someone has completed their grid they say peel, and everyone takes an extra letter. If you really don't like a letter you can return it to the pool face down for three more. First person to say peel when there are less tiles left in the pool than there are players wins. Games are quick, so you'll end up playing several back to back.

I want to get COSMIC ENCOUNTER someday, too!
(I didn't realize it was such a quick game to play! The reason I left it off my list this year is because I got Middle Earth Quest for my birthday recently and thought it filled the Giant Board Full Of Stuff category nicely for now =P)

Cosmic Encounter doesn't have a real board, though. Lots of fun randomness and tactical card play. Scratches a similar itch to Magic the Gathering in my opinion, except there's no deck-building ahead of time. Plus it's nice there are several levels of game play included in the main set.

Recently bought the Resistance: Avalon. Rabs mentions it obliquely in his 12 days of Christmas recommendations. Bought it instead of the first Resistance because I was reading user reviews on Amazon and people were saying it might be superior. Played about 12 games of it in a row with a group of five people (which is the minimum). Had a grand time. The game is about $20, which is a real plus. Already had my fun per money ratio exceeded in that one sitting.